Book excerpt: World War II is a story told most often through the eyes of national leaders, generals and, occasionally, infantrymen. Warrior Priest underscores why that cauldron continues to stir imaginations and curiosity by conveying the war's global impact in ways rarely told. Here are woven together memorably the lives of a young priest turned airborne chaplain, a Cracow student turned Polish lancer, an aircraft carrier fireman, two young women partisans in Warsaw and a French village, and a small town girl who follows a volunteer flyer to England where she first treats the wounded in a London hospital and then joins the U.S. Army nurse corps. Meticulously researched, Warrior Priest's characters interact with real-life people in historically authentic locales and situations and in an accurate chronology from 1939 through 1946. From a quiet, small town in 1930s Ohio to a Vatican-run seminary From a Polish lancer charging German invaders to a U.S. airborne chaplain jumping into the night From a London hospital during the Blitz to a church basement in battered Warsaw From the harrowing streets of the ghetto to heroic river crossings From the heaving deck of an imperiled aircraft carrier to a memorable walk down a church aisle From invasion beaches to evacuation hospital tents From an occupied French village to the Nazis' only death camp in France Warrior Priest pulls the reader into and through the cauldron of World War II by weaving together the lives of everyday people in unforgettable ways.